Published 5:11 pm, Thursday, November 20, 2014

The need to move away from fossil fuels has been overshadowing the more pressing safety concerns around the crude oil trains.

THE STAKES:

We can't let the safety conversation be obscured.

Recent conversations regarding safety of the booming crude oil business around the Port of Albany and on freight lines throughout the Capital Region have been muddled at best.

The immediate safety dangers posed by the freight tankers filled with North Dakota Bakken crude continue to draw significant concern. Since 47 people died in summer 2013 when a crude oil train destroyed Lac-Megantic, Quebec, the calls for action to improve the safety of the rolling pipelines have reached fever pitch.

Pointing to everything from the technology that controls the trains to what's inside the tankers, those involved have been dialing up the pressure on local, state and federal leaders to force the rail and oil industries to act.

And, at least here in New York state, leaders have scored some minor wins. Earlier this month, Global Partners, one of the outfits handling crude oil through the Port of Albany, announced it had followed through on plans to eliminate the weakest freight rail cars from its operations. Then, last week, North Dakota announced plans to require oil companies in its Bakken oil fields to remove the most flammable components from crude oil before loading it onto oil trains.

But the bigger, national conversations around requiring the rail and oil industries to upgrade to the strongest tanker cars and to convert rail technology to include something known as Positive Train Control are stalled in Washington.

As the weeks since Quebec have stretched into months and so little has changed, the long-term danger posed by our country's over-reliance on fossil fuels has co-opted the conversation. And that's OK, to a point.

Chris Amato, a staff attorney with Earthjustice, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental legal group, rightly says the so-called "stripping" of flammables from Bakken crude, "...does not address the underlying issue of why our country is rushing to extract and burn fossil fuels as quickly as possible."

And it's right to make sure that all the state's oars are pulling in the direction of expanding renewables, as called for in Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Draft Energy Plan released earlier this year.

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Where the conversation comes off the proverbial rails is when Earthjustice and others call for a ban on crude oil trains. That traffic through the port has given the Capital Region economy a needed boost. This oil boom is driving down prices at the pump and elsewhere, which also helps the economy and gives the middle class a measure of breathing room it hasn't seen for a long time.

Yes, we need to push forward on all fronts to convert our society to renewable energy. But we also need to acknowledge that the tap isn't going to be turned off tomorrow. In the meantime, we still need to focus on improving the safety of oil trains — right now — to protect people imperiled by the rolling oil pipelines. And that can't be muddled.